Five Spice Street

‘‘This is precisely the calamity that children bring down on us.’’ The widow summed up calmly, ‘‘What’s worth flaunting about this kind of child? It’s just exposing one’s own inferiority to the public through one’s child. When people see her son, they can’t help but associate him with her. If she didn’t have a son, she could still pretend to be classy.’’

As soon as the widow stopped talking, the room turned quiet. After a while, the sound of intermittent sobs came from two corners of the room. Old Woman Jin and the widow’s forty-eight-year-old friend were crying. They were crying because they were in the same boat as the widow-neither had children, nor could they in the future. As they thought of Madam X’s intrigue with Five Spice Street’s young generation, they hated her guts-God knows how much. In their trance, they imagined they had no children because of this detestable Madam X. If it weren’t for Madam X, they would have been happy round-faced grannies with dozens of children and grandchildren at their knees.

Old Woman Jin thought back to her unappealing ‘‘love life’’ with the young coal worker: it had made her sad and lonely. Sure, she’d had fleeting feelings of triumph and joy, but they were just a flash in the pan. It was this woman X who had kept her from reveling in her love. Now she ‘‘abhorred to death’’ this young coal worker: her relationship with him was no more than an ‘‘obligation’’ (she couldn’t bear to destroy him by abandoning him). If it weren’t for Madam X, she certainly wouldn’t have chosen this half-grown baby of a coal worker (she could get as many babies like this as she wanted). You have to know that in the past, she was a winsome woman. It was just because of her bad luck that she started hating men from the bottom of her heart and kept her distance. If she’d had a little better luck, every man would have wanted to throw himself at her feet and she could have chosen anyone she wanted. Now, she’d actually sunk so low as to end up the mistress of the young coal worker (the poor guy), and this had certainly not elevated her position on Five Spice Street; probably she’d fallen even further in other people’s opinions. The curse responsible for all this was precisely Madam X’s. This Madam X was a skilled sorceress. Anyone who saw her would involuntarily hallucinate, involuntarily start making mistakes. Generally, people would regret those mistakes for a lifetime. At the beginning, she’d had so many exciting plans! She’d spent so many good days immersed in fascinating ideas. She’d already defeated Zhou Sanji. She thought this victory was unquestionable. But beginning in the morning the day before yesterday, that damn back of his appeared again at her door. As he pulled up his pants, he was humming for fear she wouldn’t notice him. Now everything was upside down. She had no idea how it had started. She just knew that all her effort had been fruitless, and she’d become a laughingstock. She couldn’t hold up her head again. Zhou Sanji had also walked into her house at noon and announced to her and the coal worker: When he stood in her doorway and pulled his pants up, he wasn’t doing it for her. He wouldn’t give her even a passing thought if it weren’t that he’d heard her shout at him yesterday. He stated that he stood in her doorway just to ‘‘ponder things.’’